Quote

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.

Erica Jong

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Erica Jong
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 26
Author
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
New York City
New York
Erica Mann Jong
Courage
Many
Results
Cynicism
Believe
Hurt
Cowardice
People
Innocence
Open
Height
Actually
Requires
Often
Result
True
However
Today

More quotes by Erica Jong

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The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.
Erica Jong
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To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.
Erica Jong
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Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.
Erica Jong
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You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.
Erica Jong
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I think I've become more cynical about sex. Meaning, I don't think sex in and of itself leads to an epiphany.
Erica Jong
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What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.
Erica Jong
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Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.
Erica Jong
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No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Erica Jong
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Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
Erica Jong
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Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.
Erica Jong
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You must have a certain amount of maturity to be a poet. Seldom do sixteen-year-olds know themselves well enough.
Erica Jong
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Venice, that capital city of dream and intrigue, that double city (one above and seemingly solid, one below, wavering and reflected in the waters), which never disappoints.
Erica Jong
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Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it, because telling the truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak.
Erica Jong
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A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.
Erica Jong
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When everyone thinks they know you, it's hard not to be guarded.
Erica Jong
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It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.
Erica Jong
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Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.
Erica Jong
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In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right.
Erica Jong
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Conflict is the soul of literature.
Erica Jong
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In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving -instead of actually getting up and leaving.
Erica Jong